Month: February 2017

As I noted in my previous post, social isolation is very possible in a busy, vibrant city like London, strange as that may sound to some. When you’re new here and you don’t know anybody, all you see is people going about their everyday business, and it’s easy to just get lost in the crowd and do your own thing. And it is indeed wonderful to do things by yourself sometimes, especially when there are so many places to visit and explore in this wonderful city. But I certainly don’t want to be on my own all the time. And on top of that, being a homeworker, I don’t get to experience the social interaction that I used to in the office. Plus I’m visually impaired, which doesn’t necessarily help matters either.

So I knew I needed to avoid that trap, and not become isolated with just myself for company. This is a fresh start for me in many ways, and making new friends and having new experiences is the most important part of that, as far as I’m concerned. I’m escaping the old routines and starting afresh, so I want to make the most of it as best I can.

Like this:

I consider myself to be very fortunate to have retained a steady job for 12 years now. For many (far, far too many) disabled people, gaining employment is way more difficult that it needs to be, and attitudes still need to change in many areas. So I do count myself lucky, and I’ve worked hard to keep my position, by doing jobs promptly and to the best of my abilities, and earning the respect of the colleagues and customers that I interact with. And I do like the work, because of the people I share it with, the variety of tasks that I do each day, and the fact that I’ve learned a lot from it over my time there.

Moving to London, however, led me to assume that I would have to ditch that job and get a new one. Not necessarily easy, given that there are so many people in London also looking for work no doubt, coupled with the fact that I have a disability. But I would at least have a good deal of experience to build on and promote myself with. And maybe there would be better opportunities for training and a higher salary with a London-based job. So I was very prepared to go down that route. If it took a little while to find work, so be it. There would be no harm having a change, so it would be worth the effort. But as it turned out, that was one less thing to worry about.

I’ve been in London for just over a month now, and so far things are going well. As anticipated and hoped, it’s been a much needed and refreshing change of routine, and the last few weeks have been pretty busy as you can imagine. As I result, I’ve got a few posts I want to do on various aspects of the past month, so this is the first one.